The 2018 Democrat platform

Pelosi then said Democrats are set to push gun-violence legislation and background-checks legislation in addition to legislation on the Dreamers. Certainly that will be among the things we will do right away, she continued. Pelosi also suggested that Democrats would revisit President Donald Trumps tax cuts

So the Democrats are running on raising taxes, gun control, and amnesty. That should go well for them.

Science Fiction becomes Reality

Ladies and Gentleman,

I am pleased to announce, with no further ado, the first working Ansible. Quantum entanglement travels at least 10,000 times faster than light, and the device uses quantum entanglement to match vibrations between two very small (on human scale) but very large (on quantum scale) "drums". Vibrations, you may recall, produce sound waves, meaning this device can, in theory (and with massive amplification) transmit sound faster than light. Or, you know, data, for much more efficiency.

The goal is confiscation

On Sunday, the most recognizable far-left activist from Parkland, Florida, called for the confiscation of all semi-automatic weapons from American society in the wake of a shooting in Tennessee.

Reacting to the shooting at a Waffle House in Tennessee in which several people were shot, far-left activist Emma González immediately attacked the NRA and Smith & Wesson Corp.

After several tweets, González called for the confiscation of all semi-automatic firearms, writing: "Removing the assault and semi-automatic weapons from our Civilian society, instituting thorough background checks and mandatory waiting periods (and raising the buying age and banning the production of high-capacity magazines) are the ways to stop shootings in America."

There's really not much to add here. Once you openly reject the founding principles of your nation, once your teachers have so thoroughly failed you that they are leading you in protests against individual rights, once you reject the idea that people rather than tools have agency, you are lost.

Yet the mainstream media took no notice of last weeks federal court filing that exposes an $84 million money-laundering conspiracy the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign executed during the 2016 presidential election in violation of federal campaign-finance law.

We've seen the evidence this happened -- it's in the DNC email "hack" (more likely, leak). The question is whether it violates campaign finance law. I'm far from an expert, but it certainly sounds shady to me.

Until the Tea Party, and eventually Trump, we did not have two parties. We have one party with two faces. One "party" moved their agenda forward. The other "party" did nothing. Gradually people caught on and started to insist their "party" actually do something to advance their policies when in power. Enough politicians were elected on those promises to take the House, and then the Senate, but still nothing was done.

The Washington Post reported that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had privately told Corker that his friendly comments about Bredesen risked Republicans' ability to hold their majority in the November elections. Republicans hold a slim 51-49 advantage in the Senate.

Asked why Blackburn is a better candidate, Corker responded: "I think most people in our state ... will focus on the first vote she makes, and that's the vote to elect the majority leader."

That's right from his damn fool mouth -- policies don't matter, only which person gets to hand out the goods.

Rand Paul balances the budget

The Senate rules say that if the leadership and the Budget Committee dont report out a budget by April 1, any senator can do it  so thats exactly what Im going to do this week.

I will introduce a FULLY BALANCED budget that includes spending cuts, entitlement reform, and a plan to bring our fiscal house in order. No more trillion-dollar deficits. No more adding to the $21 trillion debt with reckless abandon.

At least a few people still care about the deficit (never mind the debt!).

Schools treating students like criminals for going to a range

Near the end of third period, my teacher got a call from the office saying I need to go down and see a Mr. Greenleaf. I didnt know Mr. Greenleaf, but it turned out that he was an armed school resource officer. I went down and found him, and he escorted me to his office. Then a second security officer walked in and sat behind me. Both began questioning me intensely. First, they began berating my tweet, although neither of them had read it; then they began aggressively asking questions about who I went to the range with, whose gun we used, about my father, etc. They were incredibly condescending and rude.

Then a third officer from the Broward County Sheriffs Office walked in, and began asking me the same questions again. At that point, I asked whether I could record the interview. They said no. I asked if I had done anything wrong. Again, they answered no. I asked why I was there. One said, Dont get snappy with me, do you not remember what happened here a few months ago?

They continued to question me aggressively, though they could cite nothing I had done wrong. They kept calling me the pro-Second Amendment kid. I was shocked and honestly, scared. It definitely felt like they were attempting to intimidate me.

I was treated like a criminal for no reason other than having gone to the gun range and posted on social media about it.

I can understand the pressure the police agencies are under, particularly at this school, but there's absolutely no excuse for the way this was handled. This is not just a safety thing. This is a social ostracism thing. The effect -- whether or not it is the intent -- is to place dramatic social pressure on adolescents to avoid guns and any positive experiences or training relating to guns. It will kill the positive gun culture, if allowed to continue, and the only remaining gun culture will be the criminal and spree killer culture. It's like Operation Fast and Furious. Give the criminals guns and let them commit crimes, then use the crimes to call for gun control. That's why the police only crack down on the people who aren't dangerous.

Teaching is political

A leader of the Arizona teacher strike scheduled for Thursday has urged his colleagues on Twitter to teach political activism to their students and to discuss with them gun control, white supremacy, and anti-capitalism.

Karvelis, who is heading up the teachers movement #RedForEd, is a student of critical pedagogy, a teaching approach inspired by the Frankfurt School, or critical theory, and other radical philosophies that aim to develop Marxism.

Last November, he recommended to his colleagues the book A Pedagogy of Anticapitalist Antiracism: Whiteness, Neoliberalism, and Resistance in Education by Zachary A. Casey

There's a different between education and indoctrination. Or there used to be, anyway.

Trump lawyer to plead 5th

Trumps personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, plans to assert his Fifth Amendment rights in the lawsuit filed against him by adult-film star Stormy Daniels.

Based on the advice of counsel, I will assert my 5th amendment rights in connection with all proceeding in this case due to the ongoing criminal investigation by the FBI and U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Cohen said in a court filing Wednesday.

This will look bad for Trump, but it's smarter for Cohen than trying to talk his way around a political vendetta. Unlike in the recent Lois Lerner case, Cohen is not in government service, is not accused of abusing government power in any way, and has undeniably been targeted for a political prosecution.

Operation Choke Point is back

Last week, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) instructed New York based financial institutions (NY FIs) to reconsider their relationships with the National Rifle Association (NRA) and similar organizations in light of the NRA being an extremist organization. NYDFS wants NY FIs to evaluate whether relationships with the NRA pose reputational risk to the institutions and jeopardize public safety.

This request could easily be construed is a thinly veiled threat. While the NYDFS statement does not explicitly say that NY FIs that may face regulatory sanction for failing to cut ties with the NRA, it doesnt rule out the possibility either. If the NYDFS had no intention of threatening regulatory sanctions, they could clearly have added language taking the threat of enforcement off of the table. They didnt, which indicates they want NY FIs to think there is a potential the government will come after them if they dont end their relationships with groups like the NRA.

This is one state, where much of the financial industry is based, that is trying to dictate rules for the rest of the country. This is exactly why our Constitution has an interstate commerce clause: so Congress can put a stop to this BS.

71% of FBI counterintel budget devoted to Russia probe?

One of the consequences of the Obama Administrations unprecedented decision to launch a counterintelligence investigation on the Trump political campaign in 2016 is the drain on Department of Justice resources to chase down the Russia connection at the expense of other national security concerns.

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, a retired military intelligence officer and a Senior Fellow at the London Center for Policy Research says that over seventy percent of the FBIs current budget dedicated to foreign counterintelligence investigations have been diverted to support the probes activities. Shaffer made the revelation on my radio program Monday afternoon on WMAL in Washington DC

Ban guns and get more crime

McCabe and Obstruction of Justice

Multiple former FBI officials, along with a Congressional official, say that while there may have been internal squabbling over the FBIs investigation into the Clinton Foundation at the time, there was allegedly another stand-down order by McCabe regarding the opening of the investigation into Hillary Clintons use of her private email for official government business.

McCabes stand-down order regarding Clintons private email use happened after The New York Times first reported Hillary Clinton Used Personal Email Account at State Dept., Possibly Breaking Rules in March 2015 and before the official investigation was requested by the Justice Department toward the end of July 2015.

Now, if Trump -- the elected President who actually has the authority to make such determinations-- did that, the media would be screaming Obstruction of Justice and calling for impeachment immediately. An even stricter standard should apply to McCabe, who was not elected.

I don't know how FBI investigations usually start or if McCabe issues stand down orders like this regularly, but it seems unusual. And McCabe is personally tainted by the money donated to his wife's campaign in 2016, and his other actions towards the Clintons.

If the reports of a stand-down order are true, McCabe has a big problem, on top of potential prosecution for lying and leaking. And if he points upstairs and said Obama told him to do it? Well, that'll leave a mark on the legacy, that's for sure. Not that it isn't pretty dinged up already. And if McCabe says the DOJ issued the stand down order and he was contesting it -- as the leak to the WSJ claims -- well, then the DOJ looks bad, and they have the same problem.

World Propaganda Photo Awards

Djeneta (right) has been bedridden and unresponsive for two-and-a-half years, and her sister Ibadeta for more than six months, with uppgivenhetssyndrom (resignation syndrome), in Horndal, Sweden, March 2, 2017. Djeneta and Ibadeta are Roma refugees, from Kosovo. Resignation syndrome (RS) renders patients passive, immobile, mute, unable to eat and drink, incontinent and unresponsive to physical stimulus. It is a condition believed to exist only amongst refugees in Sweden. The causes are unclear, but most professionals agree that trauma is a primary contributor, alongside a reaction to stress and depression. It is also not clear why cases are found exclusively in Sweden. RS has so far affected only refugees aged seven to 19, and mainly those from ex-Soviet countries or the former Yugoslavia. For many, the syndrome is triggered by having a residence application rejected. Granting residence to families of sufferers is often cited as a cure. (Photo by Magnus Wennman/Aftonbladet/World Press Photo)

The picture, which you can see at the link if you scroll down, is two women in bed with a little (very little) medical equipment. The "disease" described above is clearly bullshit, probably being faked for political purposes, and this photo (along with it's caption) is nothing more than propaganda.

Vehicle attack in Toronto

We interrupt your regularly scheduled proglodyte slapping for a serious matter. A van hit multiple pedestrians in Toronto and subsequently fled the scene. The suspect is now in custody, and the BBC reports as many as 10 people may have been struck. This is a dangerous time, ladies and gentlemen, and we here at Victory Girls urge you to exercise additional vigilance.

At the time of this writing, we still dont know who the perpetrators were, whether they were radicalized Muslim extremists, or whether it was a drunken jerk who lost control of his vehicle. My guess would be the former. The signs are there and the timing is certainly auspicious, but I will refrain from making an assessment until we know more.

Documents seized from Trump lawyer Cohen are leaking like crazy

Hannity's real estate dealings, nothing criminal in them. Even if there was, that should be revealed upon an indictment, not by leaking it to the press. And the judge -- a close affiliate of Hillary and Soros -- is unlikely to rein in the leaks.

And seriously -- they raided Trump's lawyer and they are leaking stuff about Hannity? Stuff that isn't even illegal or embarrassing? I guess they haven't found anything on Trump?

Honest questions for a dishonest man

In her weekly Wall Street Journal column Kim Strassel formulates 11 basic questions for Comey to answer some time on his book tour promoting himself as our tutor in ethical leadership. They are all good questions.

Unfortunately, I can only read those six, since the Wall Street Journal is behind a pay wall.

Google training course for managers isn't colorblind

The lawsuit alleges that managers had to undergo a training course called "Inclusive Perf," which was required for some managers and optional for others. A handout from the course reportedly warned managers against "rewarding people when they exhibit values and practices that are part of the dominant, and either punishing or failing to reward people when they exhibit values that are outside the of the dominant cultural norm."

The handout also reportedly listed qualities valued by the "dominant white/male culture" such as objectivity, believing in meritocracy, and being colorblind toward race.

Yes, you read that correctly. There are myriad laws on the books -- like the Civil Rights Act -- demanding companies maintain colorblindness.

Where did the Trump-FISA issue originate?

Chairman of the House Intelligence Community Devin Nunes appears on Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo to discuss the origin of the counterintelligence operation, that began in July 2016, against the Trump campaign.

Last week the FBI releases the original electronic communication (EC) documents, that underpinned the origin of the FBI counterintelligence operation. The first half of this interview contains some stunning information: the raw intelligence product within the EC did not come through official intelligence channels.

Meaning, the origin of the 2016 counterintelligence operation, which was specifically started by CIA Director John Brennan sharing his raw intelligence product with the FBI, was not an official product of the U.S. intelligence community. Brennan was NOT using official partnerships with intelligence agencies of our Five-Eyes partner nations; and he did not provide raw intelligence -as an outcome of those relationships- to the FBI.

The questions, many of which are rhetorical against the backdrop of political motives, become: if the EC is not based on official intelligence from U.S. intelligence apparatus or any of the five-eyes partners, then what is the origin, source and purpose therein, of the unofficial raw intelligence? Who created it? And why?

Well, everything else involved came from the Clinton opposition research operation.

What does Comey know about Lynch?

If the investigation continued on the same trajectory, the challenge was going to be closing the case in a way that maintained the confidence of the American people that their justice system was working in an honest, competent, and nonpolitical manner. Wed never convince the extreme Clinton haters in the news media of that, of course, but hopefully we could persuade a majority of fair- and open-minded Americans.

But in early 2016, there was a development that threatened to challenge that effort significantly. A development still unknown to the American public to this day. At that time, we were alerted to some materials that had come into the possession of the United States government. They came from a classified source  the source and content of that material remains classified as I write this. Had it become public, the unverified material would undoubtedly have been used by political opponents to cast serious doubt on the attorney generals independence in connection with the Clinton investigation.

I agree wholeheartedly with Patterico's take on most points. There are many reasons Trump may not want to declassify this, whatever it is, immediately; and he may not know about it without that necessarily being linked to what's on TV. Obviously getting this on TV would increase visibility, but there's no need to imply Trump is a drooling idiot who only gets information from the television.

We may well see this information released as the IG continues to roll his reports out, for example, or even in a prosecution later. In fact, I believe the next report due out relates to that investigation...

But I sure would like to know what the classified source of bias involving Loretta Lynch interfering with the Clinton email investigation is. If it's not already in that report or already planned for declassification somehow, Trump should fix that pronto. Even if someone has to mention it on TV for it to happen.

Rosenstein told Trump he's not a target

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein told President Donald Trump last week that he isnt a target of any part of Special Counsel Robert Muellers investigation or the probe into his longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, according to several people familiar with the matter.

Rosenstein, who brought up the investigations himself, offered the assurance during a meeting with Trump at the White House last Thursday, a development that helped tamp down the presidents desire to remove Rosenstein or Mueller, the people said.

With all due respect to the President, who is the best person to decide how to conduct his own legal defense, he's a fool if he trusts this reassurance from Rosenstein, just as he was a fool to trust the assurance from Comey that he was not a target of the investigation.

Obviously, Trump is the political target of Mueller's investigation in general and Trump's files held by Cohen are the target of the investigation into Cohen.

Remember, Rosenstein was one of the people who signed off on the Page FISA warrant, and who appointed Mueller after Comey was fired. And remember that awkward little meeting during the transition team when Obama and his political lackeys were plotting with their subordinates about how to keep the investigation open under Trump without letting him know about it?